Harmony
Harmony is a medical corporation under the jurisdiction of the FTN. It specialises primarily in medicine, prolong treatments, bionic upgrades and genetic engineering for the agriculture industry. Harmony's CEO has held one of the FTN's 'Golden Seats' since the FTN's foundation in 1355 NE. The current CEO is Giles Akkad. Structure Harmony has three major departments. Medicine : Harmony is the largest and most sophisticated producer of medical supplies across the colonies. Some drugs and equipment are so specialised that even Creed hospitals have been known to break the embargo and make purchases from Harmony’s stockpiles. : Harmony’s most successful medical products are Stimsol (a stimulant capable of increasing perception and reaction time, and removing the need to sleep), Hypnapaze (a powerful sedative, frequently used as an anaesthetic) and Heamaplasts (wound cleansers that accelerate tissue repair, often referred to as ‘clotpads’). : Harmony’s patented Prolong Services are very popular among wealthy FTN citizens. These processes dramatically slow the aging process, with greater affect when the treatments are started at younger ages. CEO Giles Akkad’s mother, Felicity Akkad, famously underwent Prolong treatment from the age of 22. She is now 72 but does not look older than most ‘natural’ 40-year-old women. Bionics : Harmony’s Bionics Department specialises in the creation and installation of artificial body parts. In the majority of cases, installations are compensating for a natural organ or appendage that has ceased to function correctly. Hearts, livers, kidn eys and pancreases are the most common units. Bionic limbs are also quite common. : Over the last few decades, however, bionics developed both by Harmony and other companies have gone beyond merely replacing body parts with working replicas. Since 1431 NE, Harmony and StarGuard have collaborated to produce bionic upgrades with military capabilities. These include bionic limbs capable of greater strength than their organic counterparts, with modular upgrades to incorporate a range of weapon systems; bionic eyes capable of seeing in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums; and perhaps most controversially of all, neural implants capable of increasing cognitive functions far beyond regular human capability. Agriculture : Not all colonies are ideally suited to the rearing of animals and the planting of crops. A common problem is an overabundance of heavy metals in soils, typically cadmium and lead. While native species from such worlds (for example, Edin) have evolved to tolerate the presence of these materials, growing plants and rearing animals from less toxic worlds (for example, Lilit) is often problematic. : Harmony’s Acclimatisation Programme attempts to rectify this. By ensuring that species undergo the correct programme of gene therapy upon importation to the relevant planet, within two generations the defects of a particular yield are all but eliminated. ‘Boosters’ are sometimes required where certain phenotypes resurge. : Similar programmes are also offered to humans wishing to relocate to such worlds. Typically, these treatments are only undertaken where a particular genetic disposition threatens the long-term health of settlers and their offspring. Controversy Harmony’s monopoly on certain drugs and treatments (particularly the Acclimatisation Programme) has been criticised – most notably by the Creed establishment, but also by other corporations within the FTN jurisdiction. Many thousands, if not millions of citizens rely on Harmony’s products not only for their livelihoods, but even their lives. Although it has never transpired, the potential effect of Harmony withdrawing its services across the colonies would be catastrophic. Attempts to spread the risk by breaking Harmony into several smaller, independent corporations have been fiercely opposed by its shareholders, and unanimously dismissed by the ‘Golden Six’ on the FTN Committee. Category:Corporation